Assessing the Al-Qaeda Threat in Syria
Is Al Qaeda involved in the Syrian uprising? It is a controversial and hotly debated issue in Washington. But if U.S. policy makers do not properly understand and diagnose the terrorist group’s influence and role in the Syrian conflict, Washington could pursue a detrimental course of action and hurt U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East.
A Murky Picture
There is reason to believe that the Syrian government is behind recent terrorist attacks that killed dozens of people.
First, the Assads have a record of cooperating with terrorists to fight common enemies. Hafez, the late Syrian president and father of the current president Bashar, collaborated with violent Palestinian and Lebanese groups during the 1980s and 1990s to check Israel, and Bashar did the same with transnational jihadis in Iraq throughout the post-2003 U.S. occupation in an attempt to bleed U.S. forces.
Second, part of Bashar’s survival strategy, other than relying on the Russians and the Chinese to back him up at the United Nations Security Council, is to convince the world and especially the United States he is fighting terrorists. Launching terrorist attacks could not only bolster his claim but also frighten protestors and paralyze undecided Christians and others who are extremely wary of total, Iraq-style chaos in the country.
These compelling reasons notwithstanding, definitive judgments should be avoided. The sophistication, technical proficiency and lethality of the Damascus bombings smack of Al Qaeda-style terrorism. Also, border insecurity, increased Islamist radicalization of the uprising, the operational capabilities of Al Qaeda franchises in the region and weak Syrian state capacity (despite the notorious power of its intelligence services) make it possible that Al Qaeda was involved, possibly with armed rebels who might have formed a devil’s pact with the terror group to defeat Assad. The picture is so murky that even America’s top military official, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, said he was not entirely sure of the extent to which Al Qaeda is involved in Syria.